


It's Eternity in There

by Ranni



Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hulk Feels, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Hulk, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers-centric, Then Character Resurrection, Time Loop, repeatedly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10763949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/pseuds/Ranni
Summary: Steve has watched them die hundreds of times now. He and the Hulk have been the only ones standing every time he lets it play out to the end. Sometimes the Hulk just stands there roars with anger and anguish. Other times he picks up their lifeless bodies and cradles them, looking confused and lost.Every time Steve resets the stone, takes them back to the start, to the moment when Tony hands it to him on the jet, and tries again. But he doesn't have much hope now that they will ever make it out alive.





	It's Eternity in There

  
*******  
Steve has watched them die hundreds of times now. He and the Hulk have been the only ones standing every time he lets it play out to the end. Sometimes the Hulk just stands there roars with anger and anguish. Other times he picks up their lifeless bodies and cradles them, looking confused and lost.

He never changes back to Bruce, not once, and Steve doesn't know what that means. He wonders if the Hulk is trying to protect his other half, taking on the despair for them both. Or perhaps Bruce is simply too broken by what they have seen, and doesn't wish to return. As it is, Steve has barely seen Bruce in all this time, except for those brief glimpses on the jet. It's like he has died, as well.

Steve weeps every time they die. He would have guessed that after watching his friends' deaths play out innumerably he would become numb, desensitized to it, but he never has. It never hurts any less to remove Tony's Iron Man helmet and see the blood pour out, his friend's dark eyes staring and empty. He screams along with Natasha when she crouches over Clint, her hands pressed onto bullet wounds to his chest, trying to stop the red that runs out from between her fingers. Steve holds her and cries out when she falls as well, in a dozen different ways; each time she dies she does so with a look of shocked disbelief on her face.

And he always resets the stone, takes them back to the start, to the moment when Tony hands it to him on the jet, and tries again. But he doesn't have much hope now that they will ever make it out alive.

At first he reset it the moment one of them was grievously injured or died, but now sometimes he waits to see if they can still somehow make it, if only one will die, not all. It feels like the worst of betrayals, that decision to sacrifice one of them, and he's not sure if he could live with himself if it ever works; if the rest managed to destroy the reactor but one of them is gone. But it has never worked, and he always resets them...still it feels like the worst sort of moral compromise, and he hates himself for it.

He's so tired. He has begun to think this might be Hell.

*******  
The stone had been discovered gripped in the dead hands of a particularly horrific enemy, who had died trying to keep them from it. They had puzzled over it, quickly discovering how it worked, how it could be useful, how it could be dangerous.

"The potential of this thing is amazing," Tony argued. "It should be taken back to the Tower to be studied by the most brilliant minds of this planet. A mind exactly like the one in my head, not to put too fine a point on it or anything."

But the people of the man who had discovered the stone first, or created it--Steve never knew how it came to be in his possession, and supposes it doesn't really matter, now--kept coming for it, kept throwing soldiers and weapons against the Avengers wherever they took the stone in an attempt to reclaim it.

So Bruce examined it as well as he could with them on the run in the jet, with JARVIS and Tony's assistance. One day he had eased himself onto the floor, sitting cross legged, the stone in his hands, peering at it with determined interest, as if it were a Rubrik's cube to solve. And as Steve had watched, Bruce had sort of blinked, going a little shimmery around the edges before startling and coming back to himself. It had only taken the space of a second, but Steve could tell something more had happened, because the curious, speculative face Bruce had settled down with had disappeared. He looked up at Steve with a dazed, haunted expression that he did not understand then. He understands it now, more than he ever wanted to.

"We have to destroy it," Bruce had said. The scientist was so grave and emphatic that even Tony had finally agreed.

******  
Sometimes he is weak and stops time because he can't take any more.

Steve has found that if he is near enough to one of the others, preferably touching them, they will enter that strange limbo with him, that period between the present and the reset. It is the brief eternity between one turn of the stone and the next, and it can last as long as Steve makes it.

Sometimes he brings Tony there with him, because he wants so desperately to talk with someone. For Tony, each time in the limbo is the first time; Steve's memories remain through the reset, but none of the other's do. Steve explains it again and again to Tony--what is happening, how they have died a hundred times, how he has brought them back to the beginning repeatedly.

In each of these interludes Tony wants to brainstorm, discuss strategies, to work out ways to change things in order to get different outcomes. They have done this dozens of times now, Tony always confident that things will come out alright. Sometimes Steve ignores his friend's attempts to analyze the situation and just leans into Tony instead, needing the comfort and not caring anymore if it makes him look weak. Tony always stiffens in surprise, but then his arms invariably go up around Steve's shoulders.

"It's okay," he always says. "We can stay here as long as you need, Steve."

And they do. It's hard to measure time here, but they stay there as long as Tony can bear it, until he is beyond anxious from inactivity.

He walks around the stilled landscape, past the Hulk, who stands frozen, fighting several enemy soldiers. Tony looks at himself, standing with Steve's hand on his arm, and shakes his head in disbelief at how he can be _there_ , and here at the same time. Steve has long since ceased to question it. Tony finds Clint and Natasha, both dead already, curled up beside each other. Natasha had died first this time, and Clint, injured, just laid down beside her and let himself bleed to death. Tony touches the archer's cold hand and looks up at Steve with heartbroken eyes.

"How have you not gone insane by now?"

"I think that I might have."

*******  
Bruce said it must be destroyed, and that's when they discovered that nothing could break the stone, could even damage it, not even the Hulk's fist. Natasha had the idea of tracking their relentless attackers back to their base for clues, and that's when they discovered the source. It was a reactor, of sorts, that Tony believed powered the stone. He was certain that the stone could be destroyed if the power source was eliminated first.

"Let's go blow it up, then," Clint said confidently, eager for the cat and mouse game with their pursuers to end, and to be done with time bending stones in general.

Tony took the stone from the case they kept it in and gave it to Steve. "You're the only one we can trust not to monkey around with time," he said with an apologetic, self conscious shrug. "I know _I_ shouldn't have it. And when the reactor goes you're probably the only one strong enough to crush it immediately."

"Alright," Steve said easily, having no idea then the hell was agreeing to throw himself into.

But Bruce had an idea of it, and his eyes were mournful as he watched Steve take the stone from Tony. "Be careful with that, Cap," he warned somberly. "It's eternity in there."

*******  
He talks with Natasha, who is ruthless, pragmatic.

"You are right, you may have to let some of us go to end this."

"Even if it's you? Even if it's Clint?"

She bristles at that thought, but nods. She isn't like Tony, doesn't offer to wait with him in limbo to recharge and regroup.

"Get back out there," she admonishes him. "Never stop fighting. Go on, Steve, take us back to the start. Keep fighting forever."

*******  
He never keeps the Hulk frozen in time with him, it is too dangerous. If he panics and kills Steve, then he can't reset anything, and none of them can be saved. On the few occasions it happens accidentally, that he is in limbo with the Hulk, Steve turns the stone as quickly as he can.

But he does wish that Bruce could be here.

*******  
Steve brings Clint in. He briefly explains things then just hugs his friend tightly.

Like Tony, Clint offers to wait with him. But unlike Tony he never gets fidgety, and never demands Steve restart time, as Natasha did. He just waits calmly, years of sniper experience and his own easy nature giving him the ability and grace to do so. They spend what might be days here, most of the time laying on their backs and looking up at the night sky. The stars never move in the heavens. There is no hunger or thirst, no fatigue, because no time actually passes.

Finally Clint asks quietly, "Do I die?"

"Sometimes," Steve answers, and it's a lie. Clint dies every time, in more violent, horrible ways than Steve could have ever imagined were possible. No matter what he tries, Steve is never able save him.

Clint makes a thoughtful sound, then smiles at Steve a little sadly. "It's okay," he says. "I was never like the rest of you; was never enhanced, never special. I'm just a regular guy who has been working way too hard...trying to play in the big leagues. Maybe I'm _meant_ to die here."

"You aren't." Steve is emphatic, and sits up, already pulling the stone out of his pocket. He doesn't want to hear any more.

"But it would be okay. It would be good enough for me." Clint clambers up to sit on his knees, reaches out to put his hand on Steve's wrist, stopping him. "You--you're going to live so long and so well after this, and you're going to make the world better every day. I'm not a supersoldier; I only get to have a little while. But I'd like to think that I still made my life count while I could. I knew this could be a one way trip. But still I had to try. I had to come."

Steve wraps his arms around him. "You and Natasha...you go into every fight without any powers, without any armor, and you fight as hard as any of the rest of us. The two of you are the real superheroes."

Clint hugs him back as Steve turns the stone.

His heart breaks again when Clint is shot in the chest and Natasha tries futilely to stop the bleeding, and again when he is shot in the neck and dies almost instantly, and again when his back is crushed in collateral damage wrought by the Hulk, who clutches his friend's shattered body and screams into the night sky.

*******  
Things don't happen the same way every time. That would be something he could work with, if they did; he could understand the patterns and make the right decisions, change things the way he wanted. But they are never the same.

There are too many people, too many variables. Five Avengers and numerous enemies, all with thoughts and reactions and motivations that change in milliseconds, all responding in different, unknowable ways every time. One shift of Tony's hands, and the jet crashes in a slightly different way. One time Clint is shot and Tony is immobilized by grief, holding him and demanding that Steve reset the stone, refusing to fight, to do anything. Another time Clint is shot the same way and instead of grieving Tony goes wild, firing repulsors like a madman, taking out most of the enemies alone. One time Natasha uses her Widow's bite, another time a gun. Clint runs out arrows and grabs a discarded enemy rifle, another time there is no gun nearby and he fights with his knives. Hulk's actions are the most unpredictable of all.

Every fight is similar, but never the same.

*******

One time Steve and Tony make it inside the bunker, make it to the reactor that must be destroyed before the stone. Steve feels a surge of hope then; it is the nearest they have ever come to victory without grievous injury. Steve strikes at the reactor with his shield, but the metal is some sort of alloy that is not damaged in the slightest. He can see the core inside, through a small opening, smaller than his hand, too small to reach through, and calls out to Tony.

"Can you hit it?"

"Of course I can." Tony's eyes are wide with excitement. "We did it, Cap!"

But as soon as he fires into the reactor there is some sort of explosion, and the resulting blastwave crushes him in his Iron Man suit, killing him instantly. Steve cries out in anguish and pulls Tony's body close, can hear the tinny voice of JARVIS echoing in the shattered, open helmet.

"Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir?" the AI calls repeatedly in a strangely lost voice, as if it cannot imagine continuing to exist in a world without Tony in it. "Sir?"

Steve can't imagine doing so, either.

"I can fix it, JARVIS," he weeps, and resets the world.

*******

"You died," he tells Tony.

"I'm alive," the inventor argues back. "I'm alive."

*******  
Steve punches one of the soldiers in the hallway he now knows leads to the subterranean chamber that holds the reactor. The man's skull is fractured, and he is dead before he hits the ground.

Steve has killed this same man nine times now.

Each time he does it something in him dies a little, too.

*******  
For the first time Natasha dies in the jet, even before they crash. Perhaps the enemy missile was aimed differently, caught the jet at a different angle; it doesn't really matter. Something sparks and explodes near her seat. She does not suffer. Clint cries out her name and Bruce hulks out while they are still in the air, and begins to tear the jet to pieces even as they spiral down toward the ground.

Steve barely has time to turn the stone as he sees everything coming apart around him.

It is a near thing, almost the end for all of them. He puts himself in limbo and stays there for hours and hours, shaking.

*******  
"Give it to me," Tony suggests. "It's killing you, Steve. Let me carry it for awhile."

Tony in his Iron Man suit is as strong as Steve, is strong enough to crush the stone when the time comes. But Tony is impulsive, unpredictable.

And what's more, Steve has watched Tony mourn their friends' deaths hundreds of times now--each time is the first time for him, raw and painful. Sometimes he is silent, other times he screams in agony, as if the death were his own. Steve can't bear the thought of Tony seeing those horrors as many times as Steve has now.

Steve will suffer for him, if it means his friend can be spared that pain.

*******  
"Give it to me," Natasha insists. "I can handle it. I can be trusted to make the right choices, Cap."

"You're not strong enough to destroy it," he argues, because it is true.

"Maybe not, but I'm certainly smart enough to figure something out. Give me some goddamned credit here. When the time comes I can get it to the Hulk and _he_ can crush it. But let me have it. Go back to when Tony gave you the stone and hand it to _me_ , instead. I'll take care of things and you'll forget all of this. It will be over for you; all of this will have never happened."

Steve isn't sure that's how it would work, but it is still so tempting.

But it's been his burden for so long now that it's hard to remember a life where this cycle of violence and death isn't his whole reality. He reaches up to stroke Natasha's cheek, and she leans her head into his hand in a surprising display of gentle affection.

"Let me take this burden from you," she says.

"I can't. I don't want that for you."

He resets the world.

*******  
Somehow everything comes together in a way that he makes it to the reactor again. It is only the second time it has ever happened, and Steve's body sags in relief.

He cannot call Tony in. The blast from the Iron Man suit is too powerful, too broad, had amplified the power and the damage too much. The image of Tony's crushed body is still seared into Steve's brain. He wonders if a bullet through the small opening would be powerful enough to destroy the power source, and doubts it. There must some middle ground.

"Clint," he says quietly over the comms. "Clint."

"What?" Clint sounds strangely out of breath. The fight has not been going on very long yet.

"Do you have any explosive shots left in your quiver?" Steve is suddenly hopeful that the answer will be no.

"Yeah."

Steve closes his eyes. "Come here. I made it to the reactor and I need you here to take the shot. Come here and let's end it."

*******  
Long minutes pass and Clint does not come. Steve is just about to call for him again when he appears, supported by Tony, who gives the captain a sharp, uncertain look.

"He's hurt," Tony snaps. "But he was determined to get to you." He leans Clint against the wall then gently assists him in a slide down to a seated position. Clint pants shallowly, and his lips are slightly blue against a bone white face. He holds his bow and quiver in a deathgrip at his side.

Steve crosses over to him, runs his eyes up and down his friend's body, looking for the injury, while Clint stares back at him blearily. Clint finally sighs and brings a shaky hand up near his heart and rests his fingers there, and then Steve sees it--a slight depression in the archer's chest. A collapsed lung, perhaps from the fight, but more likely from the impact of the crash earlier. Steve touches Clint's shoulder and fingers the stone with his other hand when he realizes that Tony is talking to him.

"You don't need him," Stark is saying. "I can just blast it." He charges his gauntlet with a whine before Steve, frantic, stops him.

"No, it doesn't work, no!"

There are shouts from the hall, footsteps of approaching soldiers. Steve runs his hands through his hair in frustration. It isn't fair; they had been so close. So close to the end.

"Hold them off, Tony," Clint says in a wheezy voice. "I can hit it. I can. Just...hold them back." He and Stark exchange a look, and Tony nods, his faceplate moving back into position, moving away from them and into the hallway. Steve closes the door behind him, locks it.

"Clint," Steve says, then trails off. Because his friend is hurt, certainly, but he isn't dead. No one is. It's the furthest they've ever come, and Clint's injury is fixable. It can still work, it can still be alright. "Maybe _I_ can fire the arrow in there." The opening is small, and he's not a great shot with the bow by any means, but he doesn't really have to be at this close range.

"No way," Clint rasps. "It's like, the _one_ thing I do around here. You don't get to steal my job." He attempts to raise his weapon and blanches a little. "Just....help me sit up a bit more, if you would."

Steve moves behind him, puts his arms under Clint's and hauls him up higher, wincing at the low groan the movement elicits. "Hawkeye, if you can't, it's okay," Steve says, but his friend shakes his head.

Clint lifts the bow again, panting, settling back against Steve's chest for support. Steve holds his shield, ready for the blast he knows will come. The stone sits in his other hand.

"Of course I can," Clint says wearily, a smile in his voice. "I'm the world's greatest marksman, after all."

The arrow sings through the air, and Steve barely has time to clutch the stone before the world turns bright white.

*******  
It's quiet in the limbo, where he stands with Clint, who looks shocked, because for him it is the first time he has ever been here. The archer takes a deep breath. He is unhurt here, in this frozen place, because his injured body still sits on the floor braced against Steve's.

Clint laughs. "We did it!" His face is alight with relief and joy. He nods at the stone in Steve's hand. "Do it, Cap. Break it."

But Steve looks down to where he and Clint sit. His shield is raised to protect their faces and chests from most of the blast, but Clint's lower body and the arm holding his bow are not behind it and will be hit by exploding shrapnel and torn to pieces. It is unavoidable. Clint follows Steve's gaze and looks down at his body dispassionately, reading the situation as surely as Steve has.

"It's okay," he says.

"You could die."

Clint smiles resignedly. "Maybe it's time for a superhero ending for Hawkeye. At least it'll be a good one. Something dramatic that Tony can be jealous of forever."

"Clint, I can't."

"You _can_. Just...promise you'll stay with me if it's the end, okay? I don't want to die alone."

"I would never let that happen."

"Then do it. Break it."

Steve holds the stone in his fist. So long now he has hated it. So long he has been hostage to its ability to undo the horrors its very existence has caused. He squeezes. For the first time it feels fragile, and he feels as much as he hears the first crack as it begins to break.

Clint gasps beside him, and Steve can see the depression in his chest appear suddenly. Can hear his friend's labored breaths as they begin to lose this frozen moment and merge back with reality.

Steve opens his fingers immediately. "I can't!"

Clint's brow is furrowed in pain, but he still stands. He folds his hands over Steve's, closing them again around the stone. "It's alright. It'll be alright."

"I can't. Clint, I can't. We can try again. We got here; we can get here again. I'll take us back to the jet. You won't be hurt this time. And I'll get us back here and we'll try again."

"How many times have you and I been here, done this?"

"This is the first time," Steve chokes out. "The reactor has only been destroyed this time and one other. In all the...maybe thousand times I've done this, I've only been here twice, and only this once with you."

He can't bear to tell Clint about Tony's death from the explosion, about how he will surely die as well. It cannot happen. Steve cannot let it happen.

Clint's expression twists. "Finish it, Steve," he says gently, his breathing pained.

"No."

"We might try a hundred more times and never get back here again. If it was just _you_ sitting down there, you would have already done it." Steve winces, knowing that it is true. "But I'm there, too, and I'm telling you to _do_ it, Steve. Finish it."

"You could die," he says again. "I can't."

"Then give it to me."

Steve hesitates, gripping the stone tighter. So many times Tony and Natasha have suggested that. But never Clint, until now. Steve is so tired of carrying it.

"Let _me_ try for awhile. I've been this far with you. I heard Bruce explain before how it works. I can get us here just as well as you can."

Steve is so tired. And maybe Clint is right. Maybe he can do better with it than Steve has. All he knows is that he can't bear to carry it anymore. 

Clint smiles indulgently, a little sadly. "It's okay, Steve, trust me. I'll take us back to the start. I'll _have_ to, because I can't break the stone myself. I can't crush it. I don't have a super suit. I'm not a demi-god." He holds out his hand, and Steve finds himself slowly reaching back, opening his fingers. "I'm not a supersoldier. I'm not a Hulk." Steve drops the stone into the waiting palm. "I'm not any of those things." Clint closes his hand around it.

Then his face hardens, grows resolute. "What I _am_ is the world's greatest marksman."

Clint hurls the stone through the small opening of the exploding reactor, and it is over.

*******  
Steve holds his shield up to block most of the blast. It is not fire, as he feared, but some sort of energy wave that knocks him and Clint back into the wall with bone rattling force. Pieces of metal are flung in all directions; he can feel Clint jolt in his arms when he is impacted, but he doesn't make any sound. Tony's voice screams words from the hallway beyond them and he tears into the door, at the walls that surround it, attempting to reach them. Moments later the Hulk, roaring, peels back the ceiling above them.

Steve holds Clint in his arms. Because he promised, had promised that he would be there at the end. Clint's breathing is slow and labored, and his fist opens and closes weakly, compulsively, where it grips his bow. Blood runs from where shrapnel is impaled along his arms and legs. Steve closes his eyes and rests his cheek against Clint's temple, exhausted.

It's over. Whatever happens now, happens. It cannot be undone this time.

"Let go, Steve. I've got to get him to a hospital. Let _go_." 

Steve hears the words, but they don't make any sense.

When he feels Clint being lifted from his arms, Steve's eyes snap open and he pulls back, trying to keep his friend close, trying to keep his promise. Hulk pushes Steve down easily with one gigantic hand while Tony tugs at Clint again, this time wrenching him from Steve's grasp and into his own arms. Tony disappears with him to soar into the night sky, where the stars will move again.

The Hulk keeps his hand pressed gently against Steve until Tony is gone. Steve buries his face in his hands and would weep, if he had any tears left. Slowly the steady pressure on his chest eases more and more, until it is only a human hand holding him in place. Steve looks up to see Bruce with him for the first time in what feels like forever.

"Bruce," he says raggedly. He isn't capable of anything else. "Bruce."

Bruce pulls him close. "It's finished. You're free."


End file.
